Train of Thought
by Ten-Faced
Summary: If a train took you away from your life, everything you knew about it, and put you in somewhere completely unconnected to it, would you go on? Miki would. Luka tries to convince her not to. For Honeycloud of Riverclan.


For Honeycloud of Riverclan, who probably never expected this from his/her/their request.

Original Request: Miki/Luka, they meet in a train/train station because one of them missed their train.

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><p>Miki was pretty sure that this was a dream.<p>

This brilliant hypothesis was drawn from three observations she made. One, the train station near her house was never empty of people. Two, she was running down its empty halls trying to reach a train she thought she had to get on when she never took the train. It was gross and loud and filled with far too many people for her liking. Three, she was the most out of shape person in the world, yet she was running like an Olympic medalist without a change in amount of sweat produced or huffing and puffing.

And four, the woman at the tickets booth was Megurine Luka. THE Megurine Luka, the actress that had beaten veterans to win the most prestigious award in the world of movies at the age of twenty one.

Miki doubted that her celebrity crush would choose to sit in a dinky little booth to sell transport tickets, no matter how sick she was of the limelight.

She reached the station just to watch the last train slide out of the station. Odd. It was one of those old steam-engine trains she saw in Harry Potter or museums, but it moved like a subway.

Dream, she reminded herself.

"Busy day?" Megurine Luka asked her as she filed a perfect nail into further perfection.

Since there was no one in the station, Miki assumed she was talking to her. "I guess," she said. This really was a dream – there was no way she would have been able to talk to her celebrity crush this calmly in real life like they were old friends had it been reality. "It's just – I needed to get on that train."

"Need, huh?" the pink-haired actress flipped her famous tresses over her shoulder. "That's a pretty strong word."

_That_ was paraphrasing a quote from one of her movies. Except the word had been "friend", not "need", but still.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Luka gave her a very knowing look. "Why did you 'need'," she said, "to be on that train?"

Yes, why did she? Miki was curious about that herself. "I don't know," she said, feeling a bit stupid.

Luka tsked and reached out to pat Miki's shoulder. She actually touched Miki.

Okay, so now Miki was wishing that this wasn't a dream.

"Theoretically," Luka said, "let's say that this train takes you far, far away. Let's say that it takes you away from everything you know here, and to what can practically be called a new world. You with me so far?"

Miki nodded.

"Now, theoretically, let's say that another train is going to be coming in twenty five minutes, exactly at five o'clock," Luka pointed to the large clock face on the wall to her left, Miki's right. It was exactly twenty five to five.

"If that train went to the same place as the train you just missed, would you go on it?"

Miki gave it some thought. "Maybe."

Luka's eyebrows went up. "Maybe? Why's that?"

She shrugged. "I thought you weren't supposed to answer questions definitely until you knew more about them," she said evasively.

Luka sighed. "I'm so bad at this," she grumbled. "Knew they should have used someone else."

"I'm happy that you're here," Miki blurted out in fear that she would be replaced with someone else. "Instead of, you know, someone else."

The pink-haired actress ran a hand through her tresses. "Nice of you to say, but I want results, not wishes. So. Would you be willing to leave your old life behind to go to somewhere you don't really know anything about?"

Miki's leg jumped up and down. Her nervous habit was kicking in again. She willed her leg to stop vibrating, and thought through her answer some more. "Kind of? As long as it's not somewhere like a sex-trafficking place or something, I guess."

Luka drummed her nails against her thigh. "Okay, now, why do you want to leave your life?"

As much as she found the actress attractive and awesome and just the most amazing person alive, Miki wasn't sure if she wanted to spill her guts to Luka. "Why do you want to know?"

The actress shrugged. "It's not me that wants to know, Miki," she said gently. "It's you who wants to tell someone, and I'm willing to be a listening ear."

When Miki still hesitated, the actress held up a pinky finger. "Promise to not tell anyone about what you told me," she said solemnly.

Smiling at the childishness, Miki hooked her own pinky around Luka's and sealed the promise. "I'll hold you to that," she said, and took a few moments to gather her thoughts. How did she say this?

"I guess," she said at last, "I'm just stuck in a rut with my life. I don't feel like I'm going anywhere with my career, with my hobbies, with my education, and I'm twenty five, for God's sake! That's around the age when women start settling down to get married, and I still don't have a steady boy or girlfriend, or any possibility of one coming up in the future. I don't do outstanding work at my job, my family's always busy, I don't have many friends . . . ."

Miki fell quiet in her tirade. "I don't think I'm very happy."

Luka took what she said and considered it for a bit. "I'm thirty two," she offered. "And every day something new happens. Twenty five is plenty young, with more than enough time for your life to make a lot of changes."

"Yeah, but you're you. You're a world-class actress who makes millions and lives life in the limelight. You've got the good life in exchange for whatever stress you go through."

"Should I talk about the high drug and drinking rates with celebrities?" Luka asked almost sarcastically.

Miki shrugged. "So, maybe," she said, "this change might not be such a bad thing. It's not like I was important enough to ever really carve out a place in this world with my presence, you know? Average looks, average grades, average everything. I'm just an average person who never really accomplished much."

"By that logic, Luka countered, "all human beings should be on this train save for extreme one percents. Yet that's not how it works."

"Then how does it work?" Miki asked. "I don't want to be some big cheese in the world."

"No," Luka agreed. "Big cheese isn't a fun job. No, what you want is to be happy."

Despite herself, Miki laughed. "Isn't that what everyone wants?"

"True," Luka said. "It's what everyone wants. But everyone wants – and needs – happiness for a reason."

"And what reason is that?" Miki asked. Luka was pretty smart and sharp-witted, but Miki doubted that even she could have come up with one of the unanswerable questions of the universe.

Luka evaded the question. "Do you want to be happy?" she asked Miki instead.

She kind of wanted to get on the train. The minute hand was moving slowly, in her opinion. Only nine minutes had passed.

"I guess?" she said, but at Luka's expectant look changed it. "Yes."

"Good. Do you like to eat?"

"Yes," this time the answer came much surer. She liked food. She didn't like cooking, but she loved to eat. Eating out was something she had to do a lot of just because she was lazy, and because of her budget she had to eat cheaply most times, but sometimes when she treated herself she found the foods to be delightful.

"Good answer. When you're hungry," Luka patted her own flat stomach with a few claps from her hand. "It means that your body needs more nutrients to live on."

"Obviously," Miki had to say. She wasn't _stupid_.

Luka flicked her on her forehead. "It means that your body is making you aware of the urge to live. The urge to survive. When your stomach growls and you feel like your entire body's about to implode because of the gravitational pull from the black hole that is your stomach is just too strong, that is you being aware of your wish to live on."

She was making Miki hungry. "That's a biological response, not a conscious one," she said. "Like orgasm during rape. You may not want it, but your body does."

Luka winced. "You do not pull punches, do you?" she muttered. "I don't even know how to counter that without sounding like a total douche."

Miki shrugged. That was the point.

Luka thought some more. "Look," she said at last. "Here's the thing about happiness, since obviously that last argument was a bust. Happiness is a necessity – but _only sometimes_."

"What?" Miki asked.

"It's like all the other necessities," Luka replied. "You only need it when the reserves have run out. You need air when your body runs out of oxygen in its system. You need water when you start getting dehydrated. You need food when your body starts to run low on calories or nutrients. It's the same thing – you need happiness when you run out of happiness."

Miki, to avoid talking, looked to the clock. There was six minutes left until the next train came.

Luka noticed. She sighed. "In your case, it's actually pretty simple," she said, drawing back Miki's attention. "You need to make a choice. Either you take the train and go off into the new world, abandoning your old life . . . _or_, you go back to your old life, and make the conscious effort to change what you see your life as. What you see _yourself_ as."

"So I'm the root of the problem," Miki said dryly. Of course she was, she was always the root of the problem, wasn't she?

"Of course," Luka said simply. "Everything begins and ends with ourselves, in a way. It's how we choose to interact with our environment that makes the reactions different. Sometimes, the factors that affect us will really be so great that we cannot but help feel like we're completely unable to control anything, but the vast majority of time, it's all about perspective."

Miki scowled. "That sounds like bullshit," she said. "You're telling me that all I need to do to be happy is to have this positive perspective on life? 'Oh, I had the worst day ever at work today! I got coffee spilt on me twice, I was groped by a pervert and my boss yelled at me so many times that it's a miracle that I wasn't fired, but great, at least I'm alive!' What human being can do that?"

"Surprisingly, a lot of people," Luka said, probably to contradict her. "And has that happened to you?"

The scowl lingered a bit longer before fading. "No," she admitted. "Most of the times my coworkers leave me alone, and I leave them alone."

"And," Luka caught the words smoothly and continued on. "Have you ever thought that this would be because of the inaccessible front you present to them? Wouldn't they assume that you're not interested in talking to them if you do that?"

"Yeah," of course they would. "Yeah, they would."

Luka smiled triumphantly. "Being bright and friendly doesn't solve the problems with every asshole out there in the world," the actress said, "or solve all the problems, really; but it does make it so much easier to handle them. You obviously don't like the state of your life is in right now, judging from your earlier rant, so? Why not give it a shake and a stir to change things up a bit for the better?"

Miki didn't say anything. In the quiet of the nearly-empty station, she heard something coming in the distance.

"Ah, my time's nearly up," Luka said. "So, it's time for you to make a choice. Do you want to go on the train, or go back?"

"After all that," Miki asked as the sound grew louder. "You're giving me the choice? It's obvious that you want me to go back."

Luka rolled her eyes. "I can _want_ a thousand different things – doesn't mean that it'll come true. Like I said, for you, everything begins and ends with you and the way you choose to interact with the world. How you choose to perceive things. So?"

The train came in, and it looked identical to the one she had missed. The doors slid open, as if an invisible conductor came and pulled them open. There was no one inside.

She still wanted to go in and step away from her life.

But at the same time, what if what Luka said was true? What if she could, in fact, make changes in her life and get herself out of that rut?

She had nothing to lose, but a lot of things to gain.

"I'm going back," she said. The train's door slid shut and the contraption steamed and chugged its way out of the station. Only after it had left did Luka speak. "Then," she said, "good luck."

And Miki's world went white. When she blinked, the world was still white, just with more shapes. Like a ceiling with fluorescent lights and blandly painted walls. There were beeping sounds around her, and she was lying on a slightly uncomfortable bed with mediocre sheets with needles stuck in her arms.

She was in a hospital.

"Miki," her parents, who had apparently been next to her when she woke up, sighed and hugged her in relief, alternating between 'thank god's and 'are you okay's.

Her family was here. For her. Because they were worried about her. It was the red zone, the time leading up to exam weeks, so her dad must have been under so much pressure and work to do yet he was here, at her side, looking like he hadn't slept or changed his clothes in two days. Her mom, always organizing events and attending clubs with her friends, was here too.

And it was clear why they were here – it was because they cared.

Perspective. Luka had been right.

Miki decided to apply one more of Luka's teachings and show what she felt to others. "I love you guys."

Her dad actually cried.

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><p>It turned out that she had been hit by a car on her way to work, and been in critical condition during the surgery. Several times the doctors hadn't been sure that she was going to make it when all of a sudden she had gotten steady and pulled through.<p>

When she was released, she went back to work with a spring in her steps and a smile on her face. Her coworkers had all heard about the accident and sent emails or cards or even gifts wishing her a speedy recovery, and for each one she replied with genuine thanks. When she came back everyone on her floor held her a brief party, complete with a welcome back cake and helium balloons. The old her would have found it distasteful, but now with fresh eyes she found it wonderful.

Even her boss came by and told her to work hard, but to also take it easy and not overdo it.

"I won't, ma'am," she promised with a smile and got to work with a vigour to find that she actually rather enjoyed sorting through papers and filing them away after lining up numbers.

And there were stressful situations as her life got back on track. When that happened, Miki drew on the reserves of happiness she had within her; funny inside jokes, smiles, small acts of kindnesses, movies with Megurine Luka in them. She used them to get through, and when she got home she cooked up something special for herself and ate in front of the TV, watching the drama of other people's lives and laughing at them.

There really wasn't much changed about her life, on paper. She still had the same job, no promotions or bonuses in her pay. She still lived in the same apartment, wore the same clothes, had the same looks.

But she knew that she was happy. And more importantly, she knew how to be happy.

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><p>AN: So I had like five different versions of this story spawned all around one of my story docs but this one was the one that got to be a real story in the end. Hope you liked, Honeycloud of Riverclan, and I'm so sorry this is so late (I don't know what train stations are like this isn't even a proper MikiLuka I'm sorry).


End file.
